The teams from two private rescue ships, the Alan Kurdi and the Ocean Viking, made several rescues over the weekend in the Mediterranean. In total, the two ships say they have 484 people on board. They are now hoping to find a safe harbor.
On Thursday night, the Ocean Viking rescued 92 migrants, including pregnant women and children off the Libyan coast. Those rescued were "extremely weak and soaked in petrol" said the rescue team.
Many migrant farmworkers in the Matera region in Italy suffer from diseases linked to poor working and living conditions, and lack sufficient access to public healthcare, Doctors Without Borders says in a new report.
The Alan Kurdi and Ocean Viking rescue ships were given permission to dock in Italian ports on Wednesday morning and safely offload their 121 passengers. Both ships rescued migrants from the Mediterranean on November 28 and had been waiting for approval to enter a safe port.
The Libyan coast guard has reportedly taken 30 migrants off the supply ship "OOC Panther" that rescued them on Saturday in the Central Mediterranean. According to charity search and rescue groups, armed Libyan guards had previously boarded the ship in an attempt to force the migrants to return to Libya.
The organizations Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and SOS Mediterranee are appealing once again to European governments to stop obstructing migrant search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) have warned that the conditions of migrants stuck on the border in Bosnia are worsening by the day. The organization says migrants there are forced to live in inhumane conditions and that they are reportedly subjected to violence by Croatian police when they try to cross the border.
Migrants housed in Greece's island camps are living "in utter chaos and without any dignity," Doctors Without Borders says. The charity described one camp on Chios where 300 people are forced to share a single toilet.
A nine-month-old baby has died from severe dehydration in the Moria migrant camp on the Greek island of Lesbos. The baby's death was confirmed on Saturday as hundreds more migrants arrived on the Greek Aegean islands.
As more and more refugees and migrants try to make it to Western Europe via the western Balkan route, and with winter approaching, the EU and NGOs have warned of a humanitarian crisis in the Vucjak migrant camp and similar facilities in Bosnia and Herzegovina near the border with Croatia. On Friday, hundreds of locals protested against the migrants' presence.
Italian Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese and representatives from NGOs working in migrant search and rescue in the Mediterranean met on Friday. The ministry called the gathering "a first step for the start of a direct dialogue between the parties."
The two rescue ships Alan Kurdi and Ocean Viking were assigned a safe harbor at the Italian port of Pozzallo in Sicily. The nearly 200 migrants will be distributed to France, Germany and Italy, according to the private rescue organization SOS Mediterranee. A pregnant woman had been evacuated over the weekend, and one man remains missing since the Alan Kurdi rescued 91 migrants on Saturday.